


Break

by ninhursag



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Explicit Rape, F/M, Humiliation, Hurt James T. Kirk, Id Fic, Imprisonment, Revenge, Torture, torture and humiliation. Hard-core id fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-07
Updated: 2010-02-08
Packaged: 2020-09-25 09:44:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20374714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: Alien slavebreakers are hired by parties unknown to torture Kirk. Gaila, Uhura and McCoy are forced to watch while frantically trying to get him and themselves out of this disaster.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going through and archiving old, previously not archived works. The tags may be incomplete fyi.
> 
> Old notes:
> 
> So, this is something I was posting anon in the kink_meme way back in November, but what the hell you all know I'm crazy by now right? Haha. *facepalm* I'm working on a neat little au where George isn't really dead and is awesome and he and wee Jim track down Winona, but who knows when that will be done, so yet get this instead.
> 
> That said, before you read this, there are two giant honking warnings I need to give you. No kidding here.
> 
> 1\. This is kind of a wip amnesty thing. I don't think this story ends on a cliff-hanger or anything, but there is definitely room for more and I'm not sure I'm going to write that more.
> 
> 2\. This story contains straight up nasty torture porn. If you're thinking, oh, no, but her treatment of horrible things is usually sensitive and thoughtful and not that graphic... um. Yeah. Sorry about this. This story isn't only torture porn, but that's a major component and in a broad sense is pretty much the point of the exercise. Poor Jim *yet another facepalm*
> 
> That said, have a story!

Gaila doesn't understand right away or she would have done anything and everything including slicing his veins open with an eating knife to keep them from taking him. The others wouldn't have understood but she already knows what will happen, just too late to stop it. She wishes to anything they'd never have had to learn.

When their captors pull Jim out of the cell she thinks it's because he's the Captain, because he has information they're looking for. Jim thinks so too, she can see in his face, something still and set under his ferocious toothy grin.

"If you think I'm going to tell you anything, this is going to be a very long day," Jim says, set shouldered and fierce. "Let me and my people go immediately and then we can discuss terms."

The one who seems to have designated himself the speaker for their captors is broad enough to be two of Jim, a hairless, white skinned creature-- truly white, not the pink and gold colors that Terran humans call 'white skinned'. Even his eyes are milky, without iris. To Gaila's eyes his face his no expression at all. "I understand that there would be no point in asking questions, your people would already have changed relevant command codes and most Federation secrets are of no interest to us in any case," he says, firm and inflectionless, voice pitched to carry well across the room. He's performing and it's not just for Jim's benefit or theirs.

Once she understands that Gaila spots the recording lights in the corner on a second scan of the room and that's when he gut starts to churn-- this is a show. Someone is watching.

"What is of interest, then?" Jim demands, clear and cold, so unlike the laughing boy she's taken into her bed that all she can see is the Captain of the Enterprise. Her Captain.

"You are, Terran boy," the man says, in that same changeless tone. "You have made many enemies in a remarkably short period of time. Some of them have hired me to make an example of you."

She can see Jim suck in a breath from her angle, but he sounds no less forceful, no more afraid. "If it's me, then I think you have no reason to hold my people in there." He doesn't move or gesture to the cell in the corner when Gaila is standing on her toes. There's Uhura, hands wrapped around her stomach, but she's quivering with rage not fear. Not like poor Ensign Milowski huddled in the background. Dr. McCoy would be even angrier if he could, but he's slumped and semi-conscious from a blow-- breathing well as far as they'd been able to tell.

The man shrugs. "They will be released when this exercise is complete, but it would be uncomfortable if we were to be forced to deal with ill advised rescue attempts in the meantime. In any case, they won't be harmed. Whatever you do over our time together won't be to protect them."

"Very reassuring." Jim barks out a short laugh. "What is it you want, exactly?" he spits, still not looking back behind him. The line of his shoulders is even straighter, firmer, like he's holding something up by virtue of posture alone.

The man takes one quick step forward, fast enough to make Gaila's eyes blur. Jim fights, but that's because Jim doesn't know how not to, not because there's a chance he'll win. The man, the other, he's holding out something small and thin that she's too far away to get a good look at anyway before it's pressed up against Jim's bare throat. She just knows that whatever it is makes Jim scream, sharp and short. The sound is cut off as abruptly as it begins, but it lasts long enough to make Dr. McCoy sit up, eyes huge and uncertain, hands reaching out as if for missing medical instruments.

Gaila can barely spare him a glance. Across the room, Jim is clutching his throat like he's gasping for air, and the man is talking, more to the cameras recording them than anyone else. "First, I want to stop listening to you babble," the man says. "You've received a vocal paralytic-- don't worry, it's mechanical, not chemical. It won't trigger any allergic responses. We wouldn't want that." And that's when Gaila understands for sure he was telling the truth. It's not information they want, not at all.

Then the man takes a short step forward and grabs Jim by the hair. He's tall, so damned tall. His hands are big. Gaila's so caught up watching them, she doesn't see what the other men are doing for a long moment. Not until they're up behind Jim, restraining his arms at the wrists and elbows. Thin, gleaming metal bars, drawing him up and back. He struggles visibly, but it's not enough to keep them from being locked on, immobilizing.

A second later, one of them use a thin, handheld laser to solder the locks shut and something snaps loose in Gaila's mind. A memory, a dark corner of a brothel in an ancient space station. A... a creature, scuttling in a corner, hands bound behind its back and a whisper, "Cross them enough, make it worth their while to pay to have it done and that could be you. That could be..." Between blinks, she screams and throws herself at the forcefield keeping her in the cell. It hurts, it's agony, fire on her skin, and it forces her back anyway. She still does it again. A third time, before Uhura's grabbing her from behind, shouting something in her ear.

The white man just looks at her, implacable and fathomless. "Ah," he says. "I see your Orion has seen something like this before."

Jim turns his head, just for a moment and Gaila sees his eyes. Wide and blank, until they meet hers. Whatever he sees in her face, it makes him flinch, even before hands grasp him by the neck and wrench him back around. "I'm sorry," the man says. "Was I boring you, Terran boy? Let me introduce you to some of my friends. You'll be getting to know them all very well."

Jim jerks back, but he's off balance, and someone is stepping forward, a woman, the only one in the group of their captors. She's wearing thin red gloves, but she snaps them off as she walks.

From behind her Gaila can hear Uhura muttering something like, "Stop it, stop it, stop it." No one listens.

"This is Marina," the man says. He's performing, still, looking at whatever unknown audience is watching, not Jim. "Normally we'd use drugs to do what she's going to help us with, but I have yet to meet anyone who is allergic to a telepath. You'll know Marina very well before we're finished." The woman touches Jim's face and there's a sound, so low it's almost subvocal.

"Be nice," the man croons. "Marina is going to make sure you enjoy this."

Gaila knows what they're going to do next, she knows it and she's got her teeth digging into her lower lip, her hands clutching Uhura's arms where they're still braced against her waist. She doesn't shout again because she thinks that would just make it part of the show, make it more exciting. Uhura's breathing is ragged in her ear. She can't hear Jim's, but she can see his chest heave, too fast and hard, when Marina rubs her fingers over the line of his cheekbone and down to cradle his neck.

Her fingers leave behind distinct red marks when she pulls them away. Jim's gone still and Gaila isn't sure if she'd fight to see his face or beg never to have to. That's before the white man, the speaker, pulls out a thin bladed knife and says, "Thank you, Marina. Now, let's see what we've got here."

It's a slow process and Jim doesn't move or flinch through it, like he's paralyzed by something. The man smiles as he cuts saws through Jim's undress blacks, the knife catching in the fabric every now and then. He pauses halfway through and leans forward.

"You look so angry," he tells Jim, and Gaila can't know that he does, she can't see his _face_. Just the smug, amused cant of the bastard touching him's lips. "You should be afraid instead." But, for Jim, that's almost the same thing, she knows that, and it makes her shake.

"What?" Uhura hisses in her ear. "What is it?" She just clutches her friend's hands harder and tries to feel grateful for the only thing there is here-- that Jim's doctor is still in a stupor and she hopes, not aware.

Then she forgets to feel even that. The man is still smiling when he leans forward and kisses Jim on the mouth. It's a long kiss and a wet one, she can hear the sounds of smacking flesh. It breaks whatever paralysis Jim was under. He can't really move anyway, not with his arms locked behind him, but he tries. Kicking out with his legs, angling with his shoulder and the weight of his body.

For a second, less than that, it almost seems to work. The man jumps back, fingers pressed to his split lip when Jim slammed into him. Gaila can see now that his blood is blue, a rich jewel tone beading on his mouth. He's still smiling. Two of his men hop forward and grab Jim by the arms, stilling his struggles. They're so quiet otherwise, like ghosts with iron grips. She can't even hear them breath, just the man and the low, ragged sound that might be Jim.

With a casual motion, the man backhands Jim across the face, the blow jerking back his head and neck. Jim's blood is red. She thinks that if they weren't holding him up the force of the blow would have knocked him right to the ground.

"Right," the man says. "Where were we?" Then he steps up again, pale tongue slipping out just a little, like he's going to lick up that blood.

He does. Short, sharp little licks. The knife comes out again a moment later. When he finishes slicing Jim's clothes off, she can see where it's bitten into skin during the process, leaving scraped up places, red and bruised like scratches, and a few that are bleeding.

"Very pretty," the man says. "And I see Marina did good work. I did promise you would enjoy this." He's smiling when he reaches out to touch, hand running over Jim's chest with casual possessiveness, like a man touching a pet or a toy. His hand stops between Jim's legs, like he's gripping onto something.

He pulls Jim forward a step, too, and the angle changes enough for Gaila to see that it's Jim's cock, hard and swollen in the man's grip, that he's pulling Jim along with it, step by shaky step, like it's a handle. She can see the set of Jim's mouth in profile. Still, statute blank, and maybe he'd looked angry before, but she can't see it now. She can't really see his eyes, even now. The motion of his breathing and the thin line of blood sliding down the corner of his mouth is the only sign he's alive.

The men on either side of him push him down over that looks like a stool. Then there are more restraints, as if they needed them, as if there was a reason for any of this. A spreader bar between his knees that they attach with clinical precision.

He doesn't fight it until it's too late and there's almost no range of motion left to him. Gaila wants to cover her eyes-- behind her Uhura's got her face pressed into her neck and Gaila can feel wetness on her skin. Tears. She can't do it though. Jim can't get away and Gaila can't stop watching.

"I'm going to kill them," she whispers and she can feel Uhura nod, hard and vicious even if the tears don't stop trailing down the back of Gaila's neck. She's done it before, killed for this, it wasn't anything like easy escaping an Orion brothel. This will be harder, but she's harder too now. She's an officer. This doesn't happen to Starfleet officers.

It's happening to Jim, to her Captain, to her crazy, brilliant human sometime lover. Too fast, it has to hurt because human males aren't built for this. Jim's body twitches, like he's hooked up to electrodes.

"You're tight," the man croons and Jim makes a low, deep noise that's probably subvocal. The first real sound she's heard out of him since they did something to his throat. "Don't worry... that's going to change very soon. Before we're done, fucking you is going to be the easiest thing in the world." He grunts and his hips shift and stutter. "Lucky, because you won't be good for anything else by then."

Gaila wants to scream, but she's not going to make this entertaining to them, no more than it already is. Pathetic, really. She shuts her eyes and it feels like it's only for a second. It doesn't do much good because she can still hear the slap of skin on skin and the way the man won't _shut up_, the way he spills out filth like he has a script.

Maybe he does.

When she opens her eyes again, the man is pulling out. He smacks Jim hard on the ass, leaving another red mark. Jim doesn't so much as flinch at the impact. "Who's next?" the man says. "We have a lot of loosening up to do."

She watches all through the next fuck and the one after that. The fourth one laughs all through it, the first of these fuckers to actually speak. He comes over Jim's bare back inside of inside, bluish tinged semen spilling over Jim's bruised and sliced up back. It drips sluggishly down over his skin.

After that one, they pull Jim back up to his feet. He's not moving on his own, probably couldn't even if he wasn't hobbled, he's shaking too hard, and Gaila can almost hear his teeth chattering. The leader looks at him, right at him, and smiles, mouth curled and smug. "You're still angry," he says and leans forward, like he's going to kiss Jim again. Instead he whispers something in his ear, too soft to catch and then louder, "You're still hard too. Why don't you give me a kiss-- a nice one-- and I'll let you come."

Jim draws back and spits in his face. She can see it, liquid tinged red with human blood, dripping down a winter white cheek. She expects a blow, but instead the man laughs in response. "Oh, I forgot. The Terran convention is that whores don't kiss on the mouth, isn't that right?" He pauses, tilting his head like he expects an answer. "Come on, Terran boy, the paralytic should be wearing off by now. Say something."

Jim makes a noise, deep and low. His voice, when it comes, is slurred, like he's drunk as hell. Punch drunk at least. "Fuck you." His head's up straight and his eyes must be blazing.

The man laughs harder. He puts his hand on Jim's cheek and grips, forcing his neck to bend. "I'd say the visual evidence is pretty clear who the fuckee is," he says. "Take a look at yourself. Look." Gaila doesn't wince when she sees the semen dripping down Jim's legs, wet and thick and sticky looking. Too much.

Jim's skin goes red, down his neck and chest, a dull blood colored flush. He shivers and shakes his head. He doesn't raise it again. The man is still chuckling when he dips his hand down between Jim's legs and grabs on like he has a right. "You have to ask to come," he says.

Jim doesn't say anything. He just shakes his head. The man shrugs. "No? Well, it's still early and I'm feeling generous," the man says. He keeps on hand on Jim's cock, sliding up the length of it while Jim squirms under the touch. The other, he puts on Jim's throat, squeezing, gripping. "You don't have to ask me, not today. You can ask one of them."

The hand on Jim's throat slides down to his upper arm, but the grip of the other on him doesn't falter when he manhandles him back toward the cell. The forceshield flickers, just for a moment and he shoves Jim through. McCoy groans in the background. Ensign Mirowski and Uhura hopping on their feet to catch him is the only thing that keeps him from falling flat. They manage to ease him down instead.

Gaila hesitates, but just for a second and she's down on her knees at his side. His hands are bound and useless, but she takes one anyway, and squeezes. "They're dead, all of them," she tells him. His eyes are blue and wide and almost unseeing. Up close his cock is so obviously hard it looks like it must be one more agony and she doesn't even want to think about what the psychic must have done to him to make it like that.

He shifts a little, probably as much as he can. Enough that he can bury his face in her knee. He's breathing too hard and too fast. Symptoms of hysteria in humans, she thinks. She can't imagine him hysterical, even now. His fingers squeeze back at hers. "Gaila," he mouths into her skin. "Fuck. Hurts. Please. Would you please."

She nods. Looks back over her shoulder to the spot the leader had spent so much time looking at. The one he'd tried to angle Jim's face towards. The recording device was probably there. He was there, the useless, unwanted spawn of a barren space rock. She shifts enough, enough that she hopes she's blocking the view of Jim's body with hers.

Nyota follows her gaze and steps up, blocking off the view a little more, hiding him between them. Only then does Gaila touch him, as carefully as she can. She closes her eyes and tries not to smell how filthy he is, the heavy scent of blood and lust. She pretends instead that she's a healer, like McCoy, that her hands on Jim's torn body are there just to bring him ease and nothing more.

She whispers while she brings him off. The words to an old Orion love poem, one her mother used to tell her, about a woman who's best beloved brought her the heads of her enemies, one by one, and lay them out like a blessing over her fence posts. When she opens her eyes again, Jim is looking at her, mouth curled, almost smiling. "Ditto," he mouths.

He shakes when he comes, though. Shakes so hard his teeth chatter and doesn't stop when she pulls him into her lap as best she can and holds on hard.  
\

Uhura averts her eyes while Gaila... comforts Jim. She just lets the sound of Gaila's voice wash over her, slow and even, like she's performing a ritual. Her Orion's gotten a lot better since she's started rooming with Gaila back in the Academy, even better now, but just at the moment it's easier to let the words just be sounds, soft and calming. When she hears the sense in them they sound like knives, vicious promises of revenge and blood.

Uhura wants that, heaven knows she wants that, has from the second they first put their hands on Jim, but she can't get it, not now. She has to focus on what she can get. She needs a plan. Someone will come for them... Spock, she thinks, would have already noticed they were gone, already gone frantic in his sharp, stoic way.

Spock couldn't stand to lose anyone or anything else. Not her. Not Jim. Not like this. Fuck, she can smell him, smell his blood, smell what they do to him. She wraps her arms around her stomach and tries not to think of what it must be like for Gaila, who's sense of smell is much sharper, to be next to him.

She's so deep inside her own head that she barely hears when Jim starts whispering something back to Gaila, soft and ardent in Orion. It's just more nonsense syllables at first and then it's something else again, "Look at the generator creating the forcefield around this cell," he says, in between a line of hoarse almost endearments. "Not yet-- don't make it obvious, they're watching. But, just tell me what you think about it?"

Uhura feels herself go still and it takes all she has not to jerk around and stare, try to see what Jim sees, notice whatever he caught through the pain he's in. She doesn't get the chance to look, because Jim raises his head and she's caught by his stare. There are tear tracks on his face, but they're drying quickly, leaving just those eyes-- blistering and blue, like a pure fueled flame. "Lieutenant," he says. "Bones-- Dr. McCoy isn't awake?"

She nods. "His pulse is steady and he's breathing well," she reassures as quickly as she can. "He's probably just stunned." They can't know for sure, not without the medical equipment that was stripped from them with their weapons when they were first captured. Jim nods, like he's hearing what she's not saying too and then he shuts his eyes.

"I'll see what I can do," he whispers. Then he turns his head and gives Gaila another long look, like he's urging her to something, just with the curl of his mouth. Gaila leans over him and kisses him, murmuring too low for Uhura to catch more than one word in three. He nods.

Then he pulls away as much as he can physically, and he's not looking at them anymore, but those... those _things_ out there. His voice is still hoarse when he pitches it loud enough, "You said my people wouldn't be harmed. Dr. McCoy needs medical care."

The man-- the one that has to be the leader, the one Uhura wants to kill with her hands-- he laughs. "What a demanding toy," he says and she can feel Jim flinch at the sound of his voice. The man holds out some equipment she recognizes as McCoy's-- a medical tricorder and a hypo. "The cell's forcefield is calibrated for you to come through if you want this, Terran Boy. Come, then."

"Jim, no," she hears herself say and Jim just turns to raise his eyebrows at her. His face has gone still, cold. He could almost be a light haired Vulcan, empty of emotion.

"It's not like they can't come get me anytime, Nyota," he whispers. "Don't argue with me. That's an order." Then he forces himself over, rolling onto his stomach. He can't get up, can't fucking walk, she realizes, not the way he's bound. She can't carry him, she doesn't have the physical strength.

He's crawled and pushed himself out of the cell before she even realizes he called her by her first name, like it was nothing. She's got her fingers in her mouth to keep from screaming something that will just make their captors laugh a little harder.

The man doesn't move, and his fucking minions just hover by him, waiting. They just let Jim crawl over to him, leaving a trail of blood drops and something wet and slick. It feels like it takes forever. The man holds out the tricorder and the hypo, like he's about to hand them over and then stops.

"You don't exactly have hands to carry this with, do you?" he asks, like he's surprised, like he's just noticed there's a problem.

"I'll figure something out," Jim hisses in response, like he's not on the floor in front of the bastard, bound arms and feet and literally fucked up.

The man smiles. "Oh, I have an idea. Let me help you." Uhura looks away, flinches away really. She doesn't look back until Jim screams a twenty count later, short and cut off, but sick with pain. She wishes she hadn't looked that none of this was-- she wants to rip the motherless bastard's arms off, starting with his fingers and she can't.

She watches him shove the medical equipment up inside Jim's body and laugh and smack him on the ass. Jim didn't scream again, but he had his lip between his teeth and there was visible fresh blood staining it. "Did your doctor ever play with you like this?" the man asked and then shrugged when Jim didn't answer, just breathed hoarsely, like he was trying to get it together. There was a long moment of nothing, quiet but for that breathing before the man spoke again. "You have thirty seconds to get it back to your friends. I'd move if I were you. Oh... and I hope you're not too loose either, because I definitely wouldn't drop anything. That would be a shame."

Jim moves but it's slow, agonizingly slow and all Uhura wants to do was what Gaila had already tried and failed at-- just throwing herself at the forcefield like she could bring it down with her body, something, anything. She doesn't, just digs her fingernails into her palms and thinks about death.

She doesn't realize she's counting until she hits thirty-odd and Jim... Jim isn't quite. And the man starts to move, stalking after him. "No, don't," she says, loud, too loud and the man looks at her. His eyes-- there's nothing there. Nothing right, like an evil demon out of one of her grandmother's scary stories. Malice alone.

"Say please," he whispers, right to her,

"Please," she says, without even thinking about it. Her hands are bleeding, torn by her own nails. The man holds her gaze for... it feels like forever, but it can't be because Jim's barely moved at all.

"Since the lady asks so nicely. One more chance. Here, we'll even make it easier," the man says and laughs when he bends over Jim and pulls the things out, out of him. Jim makes another sound, low twisted moan when the man strokes him, from ass to spine and then up again, over the curve of his jaw. He keeps doing that for a moment, just petting Jim's neck and jaw while he croons, "Open your mouth, Terran boy. Go on, and I'll give you your medical supplies."

Jim does it, eyes squeezed shut, eyelids wrinkled and lashes flecked with wetness. He makes another stomach twisting sound, like he's trying not to wretch when the tricorder is pushed between his lips. The man keeps petting and stroking and laughing. "Shh," he says, "You're going to have to open a little wider than that."

He can't, there's no way he can-- but he does. He does and then the man lets him go and he closes the last of the distance, spit and drool running down his cheeks and the sound of horrible gasps like he's trying not gag and throw up, not before he makes it.

He spits them out before he's even fully through the cell's forcefield and they clatter onto the ground at her feet while he spits and wretches, gasping out bile. Uhura wants to throw them at the wall and watch them shatter, but she can't. She can't do anything but stare, paralyzed. Gaila's the one who lunges, grabbing for Jim to pull him the rest of the way through, but it's too late.

Two of those silent fucking minions grasp him by the ankles and out of their reach again, like it's nothing, like it's easy. Jim's still coughing like he's choking to death when they drag him out of the room and out of her sight.

She collapses on her feet, fists clenched and eyes closed until Gaila grabs her by the shoulder and shakes her. "Come on," she says, loud too loud. "He got us this for McCoy. We're going to help McCoy." And then, so soft that it shouldn't be audible at all. "We have a plan."

\  
McCoy swims awake with a hypo pressed against his neck and the most pounding headache he remembers since Jim Kirk tried to distill vodka in the dorm bathtub back at the Academy. He reaches up to clutch his head and realizes why when his hands touch the bump at the back of his neck. Fuck.

“Wha' happened?” he mumbles at no one in particular, because right now he doesn't have a clue. Beaming down to a colony world. Some twitchy faced alien from a race he didn't know and Jim was... a fight? There must have been.

He blinks and groans again because the light is too goddamned bright. Someone is talking at him, but it takes him a minute for it to make sense. “Damn it, Lieutenant, can you say that a little slower?” he says.

Uhura, because it is Uhura, is bent over him. Her hair brushes against his cheek, and it feels strange, but that's probably just the head injury making things weird. She's saying something completely insane, like, “How many fingers am I holding up? Are you feeling dizzy, still?”

He shakes his head and brushes her hand aside. His neck itches and he's hesitant to move it much-- head injuries and spinal injuries can go hand in hand. Still, something is missing. There was a fight... there was a fight... and Jim? The room they're in smells of blood and sickness. “Where's Jim?” he demands.

In the corner, little Ensign Mirowski, fuck, that girl can't be nineteen, bursts in low, horrified sobs and McCoy feels cold, right down to the nails on his toes. “The Captain, they. They took him, they,” she stammers. “They hurt him.”

“And we're going to take him back and hurt _them_.” That's Gaila, cool and certain, like she's borrowing Jim's on a mission hauteur because he's not there to have it. “We have a plan.”

“We?” Uhura says. She should sound sarcastic with the expression she's wearing, but she just sounds urgent. “I knew he was telling you something. What is it?”

Gaila nods her head in the direction of a wall console, hanging just beyond a shimmering forcefield keeping them in what was obviously a cell. “That can be reconfigured to send a distress signal on Fleet frequencies,” she says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. “It's a crude model, but it's also really common for civilian use on Federation colonies. Jim used it when he was showing me how to hack-- how to make sure of computer security.”

McCoy stares at the shimmering wall of energy between them and the console. “How are you going to get to it?” he demands.

Gaila smiles, sweet as honey wine. “I'm not. You are.” He can only stare at her while she laughs, almost as bright as Jim and leans in close to explain, like she's afraid of being overheard even if the room is empty. “They set the forcefield so Jim could come in and out, but like I said, the system is crude. You're a Terran male of about the same age and height. It should work.”

“Should?” he finds himself grumbling like he's talking to Jim-- hell, her eyes are almost blue enough for all she's wild Orion kid instead of his crazy human kid.

“Jim thought it would, he--” she hesitates, falters. And McCoy hears Mirowski's thin young voice saying, they hurt him. They took him.

Gaila's mouth goes thin. “Worse case scenario, you're stuck in here with us doctor. Look-- try it, all right? I'll talk you through the mechanical problems. It'll work.”

“Leonard,” Uhura says, and she sounds tired, drained. “Jim really needs us. He--” she stops and he wants to shake her. He what? Jim what? But her eyes look dark and bruised around the edges.

He nods. It's not like there's any other choice. He's not too steady on his feet, head still throbbing, but he'll do in a pinch. And damned if the Lieutenants aren't right-- the forcefield flickers and shimmers and lets him through.

On the other side the smell is worse... thick, blood heavy. He can't tell if it stinks of an orgy or an operating theater and a big part of him doesn't want to know.

“Come on,” Gaila urges him, from behind the barrier. “We may have hours or we may have minutes. Hurry it up.”

“I'm just a doctor,” he mumbles in her direction, but one thing he does have are precise hands. When Gaila talks him through the modifications and what the device should be set to, it's not as hard as he thought it would be.

He only needs to know that it will work. _It'll work,_ Gaila had said. It's going to have to. He's about to start to close the console up when Gaila stops him. “One last mod,” she says. “Just... just in case. If they bring him back here.”

“What'll it do?” he asks, looking at her over his shoulder. Her jaw is set and she shakes her head.

“It'll... maybe give us a chance to maybe protect him. We can't... they're too strong physically and we don't have any weapons. It's just a chance.”

He wants to wait for an explanation, to ask what the hell Jim Kirk needs to be protected from, but he can't, not when she gives him a steady clear eyed look, not when the little Ensign sobs in the background and Uhura stares at the wall. He follows Gaila's sharp, careful directions without asking her to explain them and then closes it up.

Then they wait. He's not a sentient computer, not like Spock, the crazy bastard. He can't track time to the hour, never mind the second, especially concussed and knocked ass over feet. He just knows that the room is small and too quiet. That somehow they all retreat to their separate corners and wait, wait for rescue, wait for Jim. Jim, he thinks, wouldn't be waiting.

He knows he's afraid. He tries not to let himself think about what.

Then their captors renter the room. First a girl in red gloves with a blank face and the coldest eyes he's ever seen. She strides in carrying a pitcher of what looks like water. McCoy can't see the harm, but for some reason the sight makes Gaila flinch and look away. He can hear her muttering under her breathe but the words don't make any sense.

Then they bring in Jim and McCoy's vision washes red and black. His best friend, his Captain, the crazy, brilliant kid with a staggering presence, reduced to naked flesh, hands and arms bound behind him at the wrists and elbows, walking like every step was fire and knives. His skin is streaked with blood and something white and filmy that McCoy doesn't want to identify. There's what looks like a noose around his throat, one end hanging loose, and the deathly pale creature in front of him is using that as a lead.

His eyes are a blank, frozen blue. His face, all those ridiculous faces Jim usually makes aren't-- there's no expression on his face, like he's carved in ice, like a Vulcan or a beautiful statue. The fact he's on his feet and breathing, too shallow as far as McCoy can tell, are the only signs he's alive at all.

The bastard holding the lead smiles right at McCoy, like he can feel the heat of his rage. “Terran boy,” he says, still looking McCoy right in the eye. “Say goodbye to your friends.” There's a moment of nothing, just the hoarse sound of breathing and then, louder, with a jerk on the lead that makes Jim gasp like the noose is tightening. “Say it.”

“Goodbye, sorry,” Jim whispers, breathless, panting, no air behind it. McCoy hears that and then nothing else, just the buzzing in his ears, red narrowing his range of vision. He thinks he's shouting something and he can't remember why he isn't running out there to kill the motherfucker. There are hands on his shoulders, holding him back, but he can barely recognize who they belong to.

The alien son of a bitch just smile a little wider, showing flat, smooth, herbivorous teeth that are as gleaming white as the rest of him. “Doctor McCoy, is it?” he says, calm as anything, like Jim's not twisting around, head shaking and gasping for air. “Our cameras caught your little expedition outside the cell. Very clever. I'm sure your Starfleet will pin a medal on you when they come. I even imagine it will be soon.”

“You'll be rotting in a cell on an asteroid somewhere when they do,” McCoy hisses.

“I'll be long gone, along with this lovely piece of flesh,” the creature replies, without looking at Jim at all. “Your attempt will be useless and the buyer will be more than content to have us finish the training where he can see and touch.”

McCoy roars something, or wants to. He's shaking. The fuckers all have their phasers out and if he ran at them they'd just cut him down. He knows this, he knows goddamnit. He can't look at Jim because he'd do it anyway.

Then the girl in the red gloves steps forward. “Enough. Bring him here if you want me to get him ready for transport,” she says. Her voice is soft, but the man nods and tugs Jim to her. McCoy shakes his head, but she doesn't... she doesn't do anything. She dips a cloth in her water pitcher and uses it to wipe off the skin of Jim's face, cleaning off the dried and streaked filth. Jim doesn't so much as twitch under the touch.

“Marina's fastidious,” the man says and smirks like it's a joke. “She won't touch dirty flesh. I think you look more appropriate that way, boy.”

The girl puts her hand on Jim's cheek where she'd cleaned off and that's when McCoy gets that it's some kind of twisted psychic thing she's doing. Jim reacts to the touch for the first time and it's to flinch and hiss, hoarse and shattered. She shakes her head and presses her fingers in, leaving white pressure points behind her when she takes them away.

“He's open enough now that I can put him in stasis. We should go,” she says. The man just laughs, sounding delighted and claps her on the shoulder.

“Open indeed. Tell you what Terran boy-- how about a choice? Last one, so enjoy it. You can let Marina send your mind into stasis for our trip. You'll blink and we'll be there to finish making you into a good little toy. Or you can be awake for it and see how interesting it is to be bound and packed into a cargo box for a week. We'll make sure your new best friend is fully charged, of course, for company.” That doesn't make a lick of sense and McCoy's shaking his head, not wanting it to make sense, and then the thing... he... it-- it reaches between Jim's legs and touches something just barely protruding out of him. Tugs on it, just a little and when an inch is pulled out McCoy can hear the steady drone of the thing's vibration. Jim is shaking visibly. Worse when the thing is pushed all the way back in.

All he can think is fuck, fuck, no wonder the kid can't walk right, and fuck. And Gaila is right up behind him, not letting him go, what the hell is wrong with her? “Follow the plan,” she hisses. “It'll work.” How can he when he doesn't know what the plan is?

And then the man says, “But-- here's the good part. Chose the second option and I'll let you say goodbye to your people in there in person. Give the angry Doctor a nice blow job, maybe? And the lovely ladies a taste of this?” The man puts his hand on Jim's cock, like it belongs to him and rubs his fingers all over it. “What do you say?”

Jim's quiet for a long moment and it's crazy, McCoy can't even picture it, it's fucking insane and where the hell is the Fleet-- Spock, that pointy eared bastard should have been here by now with his assholes with phasers. What good are they?

“Second one,” Jim whispers, like it's torn out of him.

The man fists Jim's cock a few times for good measure before sayings, “I was hoping you'd pick that.” He sounds cheerful enough to make anyone sick.

McCoy's shaking so hard he can barely feel anything, but he's on his feet and for some reason his hands steady when they push Jim through the field and into their cell. Jim collapses like a doll with the strings cut, unable to catch himself with his hands bound behind him.

But, when McCoy kneels down next to him, grabbing the tricorder like it's any other emergency, Jim tilts his head up and looks right past him and the motherfucking brat is... smiling. “Gaila?” Jim whispers. “Did you?”

McCoy's head jerks up and Gaila is downright grinning. “The cell's barrier forcefields are set to deflect any intrusions outside of those I specified, Captain,” she says and not softly either. She looks up and over McCoy and out at the creatures outside. “That means you dead men out there and your phasers are locked out.”

The man outside laughs again, but there's a pause in it, a hesitancy that McCoy savors. “You think we can't break through our own security systems? I'd meant to release you and take just the boy, but now I think I think I'll see what the market will bear for a full away team.”

Gaila just raises her eyebrows and leans back. “Really, now? How much time do you think you have?”

Under McCoy's hands it's Jim who laughs then. Laughs until he's coughing, and McCoy is cursing him out for being an idiot while trying to untangle the damn noose on him and get it off. “Hey, Bones,” he whispers, forcing the words out between coughs. “What's one more no-win fuckoff scenario?”


	2. Chapter 2

The... those creatures that hurt Jim, they try to break in no matter what Gaila says, like they're trying to call a bluff, but McCoy can't care about that not now.

What he cares about is under his hands, pretending not to be in pain. McCoy shuts out the rest of the world and focuses down on the task at hand and nothing else. He tries to catalog what's wrong with Jim as best he can with a tricorder and a near empty hypo, while Jim just looks at him and keeps himself still with an obvious effort. There were a few obvious things, keep his spine and neck straight, check for broken bones, palpitate the stomach for hardness. Check the eyes.

Get that damn thing they'd forced inside of him out. Jim hisses between his teeth but doesn't flinch when McCoy slides his hand between his legs and pulls it by the base. It's too wide, too damn long and slick and silver, filthy with blood and other things there isn't time to think about. He tosses it aside and flinches when it hits the ground. Strokes down Jim's spine as if to soothe him and watches the blood trickle down between his thighs, warm and fresh, but slow moving. Abrasions, probably-- not-- the main worries will be shock now and infection later and later will be in sickbay so that will work. He can hear Jim grind his teeth, but he doesn't cry out.

The arm and elbow restrains stymie McCoy. “I can't find a catch,” he mutters, hands running over the metal, looking for a locking mechanism, anything. There's what looks like it might have been a latch once, but the thing is melted and soldered shut. “What--”

“It isn't meant to come off,” Gaila says sharply from behind him. When McCoy looks up she's standing close, while Uhura is a few steps away, watching the aliens, stance loose and ready like she thinks she might fight. Gaila is watching Jim. “They put it on him and used lasers to melt the locking mechanisms shut, we'll need to cut through the metal to get them off him.”

Then she kneels down next to him and steadies his elbows before he bumps it into Jim. McCoy hadn't even realized he was shaking again until she stopped him. Jim... Jim just keeps himself still.

“Bones,” he says, all stupid-steady, like McCoy's the one with a problem. “Gaila, you gotta relax. Breathe.”

“You're trying to keep me calm!? You're not normal, do you know that?” McCoy hisses at him. There's no way he's this calm, there's no way. It's probably psychologically damaging to even try to be, like walking on broken bones—but then that's Jim.

Jim makes a hoarse, gasping sound that's probably supposed to be a laugh and twists around, fighting it when McCoy tries to keep him still so he doesn't accidentally wrench his neck. “Bones,” he says, and McCoy gets another glimpse of his eyes and there is not a damned thing calm or steady in them. “This mission is not over until you all are safe and on the Enterprise, okay? Do you get that?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” McCoy blurts out before he can stop himself.

“It means I'll stand down when I'm good and ready. Until then, I'm the captain. That goes for you too.” There's a sharp look at Gaila. Her lips tighten but she nods. She puts her hands on Jim's face and whispers something soft and even in Orion. Jim holds himself still for a long moment and then nods back at her. His bound hands twitch. “Thank you, Lieutenant,” he whispers and then looks away. “Let's talk about that later, okay?”

McCoy doesn't get a chance to ask. Uhura's voice cuts through everything else, even the noise outside. She sounds blisteringly pleased. “Spock's here,” she says and smiles with all her teeth. McCoy looks out into the room and sees a lot of nothing, just the aliens, but she looks so sure. Vulcan mind jumbo probably?

“Oh, good,” Jim says and shifts up like he's trying to get up. Idiot.

“Don't be an idiot, stay still, who knows what kind of damage you've got.” McCoy glares at him and pushes him back down. He knows better, hell, this is far from the first time he's dealt with someone high on combat adrenaline, but he manages to be totally unprepared for the wicked knee slam into his side.

“Don't,” Jim hisses, while McCoy sucks in the breath that was knocked out of him. He catches Jim's eyes for a split second and sees all the calm that isn't there at all, that probably never was. He reaches out, hand half way toward Jim's shoulder, just wanting to... something.

That's when the room explodes and Spock being there with a security team changes from a hypothetical proposition to a serious outlay of violence. Their captors are ready, but so is the security team, like Uhura fed them all the tactical information right through the Vulcan mumbo jumbo link. McCoy wonders what else she fed them-- the stench of burned flesh is brutal, the kind you get from phasers set firmly on kill.

Jim manages to push himself onto his knees while McCoy's distracted, like he's seriously trying to aggravate any potential spinal injuries. Gaila's still at his elbow, hands not quite touching his back. “Commander,” Jim shouts, when Spock raises his phaser and points it at the head monster, the one who'd kept fucking talking. “Not that one. Keep that one alive.” He looks like he's going to say something else, but he winces and his eyes roll back in his head. Gaila catches him and easer him back to the floor before he collapses.

“Told you you were injured, you stupid kid,” McCoy mumbles, scurrying over to him. Even as he says it though, he's half way to panic. Nothing on the tricorder readings he's got suggest that Jim should just pass out like that. There might be-- must be injuries he can't see. Or else shock setting up, finally and brutally.

Jim's pulse is thready under his hands, erratic. Skin is clammy, even under the filth streaking it. “Damnit, Jim,” McCoy whispers, pressing his hands against his friend's cheek.

“What's wrong?” Gaila demands. Her eyes are wide and nearly as blue as Jim's. “What happened?” McCoy shakes his head. He looks up, mostly by chance, out into the room and the waning fight outside. The woman, the one with the red gloves, Marina, she's staring at them from out of a corner. Spock's security team is ignoring her, which makes sense since she doesn't seem to be armed but... the way she's looking at them. McCoy shudders and forces himself to look away.

The firefight can't take more than another full minute, maybe less. McCoy's distracted trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with Jim, he definitely isn't counting, is barely even aware except that Gaila is right next to him and between her and Uhura, they're telling Spock how to bring the forcefield around the room down.

Then Spock is right there, alien warm and kneeling right next to McCoy. His face is completely still, like a chunk of green ice, and if he hadn't just rescued them, McCoy would want to deck him for that. Then Spock touches the back of Jim's neck with his bare hands, with such deliberate care that McCoy forgets to be pissed for a second, looking down at him unblinkingly.

McCoy has no idea, none, what Spock think he's doing, not until he thinks about Vulcan mumbo jumbo again, but Spock wouldn't-- he's sure he wouldn't do anything, not to Jim. Not now.

Spock's expression doesn't change, but he stands up and walks across the room. Not slowly, but not fast either. His normal, deliberate pace. Normal deliberate hands, smooth and graceful as he stalks over to the woman, the red gloved one. She doesn't even seem to notice him, her eyes are still on Jim.

Spock moves fast, faster than anything McCoy can remember, even for him. There's a cracking sound, bright and sickening. Shattering bone. Spock breaks the woman's neck with one motion. Then he turns around like she's not even there.

Jim makes a low, whimpering noise and his eyes flutter open again. “Bones, s'that you? Please, make it stop,” he whispers. “Hurts.”

“It's stopped,” McCoy promises. “You're all right. It's over now.” It's not a lie, it isn't. There's nothing left breathing in this small and close abattoir of a room, nothing but them, the security team, and the final alien, the one Jim had ordered be kept alive.

The one McCoy would seriously consider breaking every oath he ever made for the chance to kill with his bare hands.

\

“I want to get him to sickbay, and I want him there yesterday,” McCoy says to no one in particular. Certainly, Jim isn't listening, not anymore. His pulse is still erratic and he's shaking hard. His eyes aren't really focusing right and McCoy isn't sure whether to be terrified he broke down so quickly or wonder what the hell took him so long.

Spock seems to be with it, at least. He's still got the last creature in his sights, but he nods in McCoy's direction. “Most unfortunately, this building's structure interferes with the transporter,” he says coolly. “Likely a deliberate part of the design. We will need to move him outside to allow safe evacuation. Is that advisable given his condition?”

McCoy frowns, but finally nods. “Nothing obviously spinal, though it could be a problem,” he finally mutters. “Shock is the risk here, and he's showing symptoms. That-- the telepath. She did something, didn't she?”

Spock's mouth turns to a solid line. “Indeed,” he says. “She attempted to.” He's still staring from Jim to the thing that hurt him, the one who is now standing still and silent, ears cocked like it's waiting for something. It takes McCoy a minute to realize what Spock is doing, thinking about. He'd never have gotten it at all, the blankfaced green eyed goblin, if it weren't for Uhura stepping up.

She's got a phaser from someone and she's holding it steady. “Spock,” she says. “You and Dr. McCoy, you take Jim out of here. Gaila and the security team and I will make sure of the prisoner.”

“Jim wants him alive,” McCoy says. It's not something a Star Fleet crew should ever have to say, there are rules and conventions. They could all be court-martialed for harming a surrendered prisoner. It's just that if he has to remind himself of that, then hell alone knows what some of the others must be thinking.

Jim is breathing in through his nose, like he's trying to steady himself out. He flinches when Spock goes to pick him up, but just for a second and then goes right on back to his breathing. McCoy doesn't ... it's a real problem caring about rules and conventions, when Spock's carrying Jim like a bride across a goddamned threshold-- if the bride was one naked, messed up bruise with come in his hair. McCoy doesn't have so much as a blanket to cover him, it's offensive.

“You know there was a camera in there, right?” Jim says, out of nowhere, when they're half-way down an empty corridor. “Whoever paid them wanted to watch. I wonder who else they're going to show.”

“What?” McCoy hears himself spitting.

Spock keeps walking, smooth and even, like jostling the burden he's carrying would kill him-- well, McCoy would be the one doing the actual killing. He says, “Understood.” It almost sounds like he does. Bastard is one up on McCoy there.

He doesn't figure it out until Jim bullies him into letting him out of sickbay three hours later. Jim's got a torn shadow of his normal sweet smile and a bruised face to his credit and that's the only reason McCoy goes along. That and Jim's voice, soft and blank when he says, “I'm going unless you're planning on strapping me down. Are you, Bones?”

He can only flinch and look down at his feet, anywhere but at Jim's quiet face. Even then, after all of that, McCoy comes along, tricorder in one hand and hypo full of sedative easily accessible.

Jim walks without limping, which is only half the miracle of modern regeneration technology. Half of it is the pain meds, the rare ones that Jim isn't allergic to. He's probably numb from the waist down so McCoy keeps as close as he can, terrified he'll hurt himself more without even feeling it.

They're headed for the brig. Jim walks fast and deliberate, ignoring the startled glances and sucked in breaths from the crew members that catch sight of his battered face. They might think he's just fresh from a fistfight, if they don't look too closely.

When they get there, Spock's beaten them to it. He's in the cell, sitting on the bench next to the prisoner, as calm as you please.

“Terrans are greedy creatures,” the motherfucker says and shakes his head, suddenly doleful and shocked at the world. “When Orions hire our services, it's to destroy one that's caused them harm or cost them money. A true enemy. Not merely because they see something beautiful and beauty refuses them.”

It's a trick and a trap, anyone can see that. The man-- the thing is trying to provoke them, goad for reasons he knows best and McCoy can damn well see he's doing it. It doesn't matter. “Who?” Spock's voice is so calm it's insane, like he's playing pretend. Pretend he can never be ruffled. It's a bad joke. “Who retained your services in this matter?”

The thing tilts his head and gives the beginnings of a smile, like he'd smiled when he hurt Jim. “That information has value, I believe. I will negotiate for it.” Then he-- it stands up, unblinkingly gaze settling on McCoy and on Jim. “Ah, good to see you again, Terran boy. Did you like it enough to come back for seconds?”

Jim doesn't even flinch. He smiles instead. It's a terrible thing to see. “Give us the one who hired you and I'll let you go, free and clear.”

“Captain--” Spock hisses in time with McCoy's, “Damnit, Jim.”

Jim doesn't even seem to hear. “It's the best deal anyone will ever give you. What do you say?”

The man laughs out loud, sharp and heady. It churns McCoy's guts. “Make it official,” the man says. “In writing, that's what you Federation types do, isn't it? Oh, and how about you give me a kiss?” He blows Jim a kiss, with a wet, lip smacking sound. Jim's flinch is small, but noticeable.

Spock's on his feet so fast McCoy doesn't have time to blink, hands on the man's throat. “Unacceptable. You will not speak to him. You will not look at him. You—”

“Spock,” Jim snaps. “Take your hands off the man's throat so he can give me my name.”

Spock's fingers seem to tighten instead, flexing visibly around the neck they're squeezing. But finally he says, “Captain,” and lets go with a blank, serene expression. “As you wish.”

“And you will give me a name,” Jim says to the man. “My word is good, anyone can tell you that.”

McCoy has no idea if the fucker believes him or he just believes Spock's hands are still itching for his throat and remembers what they did to that telepath's neck. He stammers out a few syllables, so hoarse from the choking he's taken that McCoy can barely make it out at first.

“He called himself Anton Karidian. He was another Terran. You'd know him, I suppose.”

Jim, though, just shakes his head blankly. “No,” he says and all that shows in his face is confusion. “Never heard the name. Who...”

“Enough,” Spock says, like it finally is. “Toleration your frivolous delay is illogical.” Then he puts his hands right on the man's face, over the psi-points. And from everything McCoy knows about the ethics of telepathy, this is about as close to no-go as it gets. It must hurt too-- McCoy gets to hear the motherfucker scream.

Then he drops him like an oil slicked rock and walks right out of the cell. “Jim?” he offers, holding out his hand.

“Thank you,” Jim says gravely, and takes it. Spock doesn't touch the psi points, just palm to palm. Not a real meld then. McCoy doesn't know enough to know the difference, not really. If there even was a difference.

It only lasts a second, but that's all it seems to take before Jim is staggering away, face as green as Spock's. McCoy gets about two seconds of warning before Jim just leans over and throws up in the small corner waste receptacle that had really only been set up for paper, not biologicals and beeps in protest.

Jim keeps gagging out vomit anyway, long enough for both McCoy and Spock to come up on either side and then... just stand their like a couple of idiots, too afraid to touch. When Jim finally straightens up and wipes his mouth his expression has gone blank again.

His voice is hoarse but absolutely steady. “Take us to the nearest Orion controlled space station. We'll drop off the prisoner there... after we inform station control just how extremely cooperative and forthcoming he was about all his former employers when questioned by the Federation.”

From the cell the prisoner cries out for the first time. “What? They'll think I betrayed them! They'll kill me!”

Jim doesn't look back at him. “Not my problem,” he says and puts his back to the man. “Gentlemen, I... thank you. If anyone needs me, I'll be... around. And if you see Lieutenant Gaila, could you tell her I need to talk to her?”

McCoy's too startled to protest for about thirty seconds and that's all the time Jim seems to need to slip out and disappear into a turbo lift.  
\

Spock observes McCoy's distress. His own is more focused. He does not fear for his Captain, not aboard the Enterprise, that would be illogical. And yet...

“Why Gaila?” McCoy mutters, shaking his head.

Spock regards him carefully. “They share an intimate relationship, do they not? In as much as the Captain and the Lieutenant have shown themselves capable or interested in intimacies beyond the physical, they seek each other out.”

McCoy's face contorts itself in a manner that is strangely soothing in its familiarity. “They're a pair, all right,” he concedes. “She was whispering to him the whole time down there-- in Orion, mostly. Something about Aadil and Avi-Avin--”

“Avinashi,” Spock says with a nod. Something of the Captain's state of mind becomes clearer.

“Avinashi and heads,” the Doctor concludes gamely. “Whatever it was, it calmed him down when I couldn't.”

“It is an ancient Orion ballad,” Spock says, answering the question McCoy had left implicit. “The Tale of Aadil and Avinashi. It is a fascinating piece, though deeply emotional and incomprehensible outside of such context.” McCoy's eyes narrow by several millimeters, and his lips become unattractively compressed. Spock accepts that as his cue to continue. “There is no word in the old Orion tongue for rape,” he explains.

McCoy begins a protest with noise. “Why would you--”

Spock shakes his head. Normally interruption would be illogical, but so too is the Doctor. “I tell you this, because it might shed light on both the ballad and current circumstances. There is no word, nor is there a word for great affection that is... that leads to pair bonded mating. And yet the ballad describes nothing else. Avinashi was the sole daughter of a chieftain and Aadil was her... retainer or perhaps a superior translation would be bodyguard. The enemies of Avinashi's father detained her and assaulted her most grievously.”

“Raped her, you mean,” McCoy spits out. Spock allows himself a nod.

“Indeed. In most published versions of the ballad they raped her and ultimately disfigured her. Aadil, who had sworn to protect her could not. She then shut herself into a tower, away from all other beings. He coaxed her out again, in many ways, but primarily by bringing her the heads of those who had assaulted her and attaching them to her fencepost. He was ultimately successful in wooing her when he brought her the last head.” Spock shrugs at the pallor of Dr. McCoy's expression. There is no reasonable way to prevent it, even if he did understand the underlying emotionalism. “You understand, there is still no word that truly replicates the meaning of the Standard concept of 'love' in Orion, but they say--”

“I'll bring you what Aadil gave Avinashi,” McCoy says, with the air of one who had heard exactly that phrase and committed it to memory. “That's what she said. And he said... he said 'Thank you. Let's talk about that later'” McCoy's face remained twisted, distorted, as if reliving the memory. “Does that mean she loves him or that she's going to scalp everyone she can find who might be responsible for what happened to him on his say so?”

Spock inclines his head briefly. “Affirmative,” he says. “You should know that the tale of Aadil and Avinashi is not merely intended to be... romantic, I believe, is the correct term in this instance. It is also a cautionary tale, of excess.” McCoy's mouth moves but he does not protest further, does not speak at all for ten minutes and nine point three six seconds.  
  
“Excess, is it? Who in the hell could blame her? Fuck, I might be game to hold the knife for her.”

Spock inclines his head. “And, yet, it is our duty to safeguard the interests of our Captain. As well as the Federation.”

McCoy puts his hands on his face and shifts them as if it pains him. “I dunno what you think I can tell you that will help you with that. Except I don't know about what kind of words they have in the Orion language, but I've seen that girl look at Jim and I've seen him look at her. She's got _his_ interests in her heart or I'm blind and deaf as a post.”

“No one has impugned your senses, Doctor McCoy,” Spock says.

Spock parts with Dr. McCoy five minutes, thirty-seven seconds later. Nurse Chapel comes to collect him, a very human tinge of audible irritation in her tone.

“You've got a concussion at the least and who knows what else,” she scolds, waving a tricorder at the doctor. “Physician, get your ass to sickbay and heal thyself.”

“I need to find Jim, fuck knows that that idiot--”

“Do not fear. I will speak to the Captain and speak with the Lieutenant if I locate her,” Spock says. “I thank you for your insight in the matter.”

McCoy makes a customary grumble, but does allow himself to be taken by the arm. After all, Nurse Chapel is correct about his medical condition, it is only logical. Spock continues on his search for the Captain, starting with the observation decks and then moving on to engineering. His search is inconclusive and an inquiry to the computer indicates that the Captain has tampered with the search subroutine. Such tampering can be overriden, but not in a timely way, given the skill set of the programmer.

Spock is more successful in locating Lieutenant Gaila. She is alone, waiting in the mouth of a Jeffreys tube, arms crossed. She has the speculative expression of one who is expecting company and she inclines her head when she notes his presence. “Hello, Commander.”

“The Captain has requested your presence,” he tells her. “Unfortunately, he has absconded and I cannot direct you to him.”

That makes her smile. She smiles often, but his observations tell him the smile is not typical of her. He is not talented at understanding emotional resonances, but the Lieutenant does not seem to take any pleasure in the knowledge. “Don't worry, I know where to look,” she says and jumps out of the tube, steady and light on her feet.

He breathes in. “A moment, Lieutenant, before you go.”

Her head tilts. Her hair is drawn back, but otherwise chaotic, a cloud of disorganized red. Her posture is straight and entirely correct, however, far outside the cultural norms of an Orion woman. She learned well at Starfleet. “Yes, Commander?” she inquires sharply.

“Dr. McCoy informed me of the discussion you engaged the Captain in while you were held prisoner. You would seek vengeance on his behalf,” Spock says. There's a coolness in his tone that dances on the edge of disapproval. He tries to restrain it.

“We discussed a lot of things,” she says, just as coolly. “He was hurt.”

Spock raises both brows and leans forward in a way that in his experience makes ninety point seven percent of crew members move back a standard arms length. “So you spoke without any intent of follow through?”

Lieutenant Gaila clearly falls into the remaining nine point three percent, as she merely laughs at that, though the laughter does not appear to indicate either pleasure or humor. In fact, that particular response is one she primarily shares with the Captain. “You ask me that, but you have a human lover,” she says, in unaccented Terran Standard. “What would you say if she were treated like that?”

“Do not,” Spock says. He does not allow the image to surface, not of finding Nyota like he'd found the Captain, bare and dirty, mind screaming under his hands with only the thinnest layer of control keeping voice from joining it. “Your question requires speculation I do not wish to indulge at the present time.” His hands tighten and ball up behind his back.

Gaila's mouth softens and she breathes out nosily. “So, don't indulge that far. You killed the psychic because she was hurting him, not Nyota. Do you regret that? Or are you asking me these questions because you regret that you haven't done enough and want to shed more blood for him?”

“The Captain is a... a friend. I merely wish to ascertain your motives,” Spock says. “In many schools of Terran ethics and psychology, revenge is thought to be personally harmful to the seeker.”

Gaila turns around for a moment. Then she turns back, so that she looks him directly in the eye. “You Vulcans have always been cool ones, but you smell different from most of them. You didn't smell cool at all when you found Jim, what had been done to Jim.”

“What of it?” Spock presses. She shakes her head.

“We're talking about revenge. I bet you didn't smell cool when Nero killed your planet,” she says, without ever looking away. “And then you saw him die. Jim gave you that. What do you think your motives were then? What were his?”

“Not in cold blood,” Spock says, still cool and calm, in sound if not in whatever sense an Orion would call smell. His voice does not rise in volume. “And, in fact, his death changes little save that he was prevented from doing further damage. It will not bring back Vulcan. It brought me little in the end.”

“Would you say it brought you nothing at all worth having?” she queries. The question, he must admit, is a fair one. It does not make it easy to entertain.

His lips tighten. “It did not bring me back what was lost. The dead remain dead, the lost do not return.”

Gaila shrugs. “No, it won't bring back the dead, but tell me something, something true. If he were still alive, walking the galaxy—how would you feel then? Think about it. Imagine it.”

Spock goes still and doesn't answer for a long moment. “Your hypothetical is not fully logical,” he murmurs.

“It's true, though, isn't it? If you can't deny it, help me or get out of my way.” Spock had not realized he was in her path, an almost unforgivable lapse of control. He nods and steps aside, but she doesn't move immediately, as if waiting for an answer from him.

“The Captain is entitled to a certain amount of leave after an injury such as he sustained,” Spock says instead of answering directly. “If you were his registered partner, you would be permitted to take leave with him. I presume he will ask you this.”

Gaila blinks one. Twice. Then she laughs, true humor in it for the first time. “Really? I didn't know that. That's so... so Terran. These ridiculous pair bonds tangled in with the simplest things.”

“Yet, you will indulge this custom.” It is not a question. “I will prepare the paperwork for you.”

She hesitates a beat, watching his face until she gets the expression she was waiting for. Wordlessly, she nods, and then turns and walks away. Somewhere on this ship, Jim awaits her presence. Spock has... has hope, that it will be enough.

\

She finds Jim curled up in one of the tunnels as close as you can get to the warp core as is safe without protective equipment. He's curled up, arms wrapped around his knees. His feet are bare and pale in the dull light, and for some reason that's what makes her worry. His ridiculously pale human feet, sticking out, weirdly vulnerable so that she wants to cover them with something.

He doesn't turn to look at her right away, so she lets her boots click hard against the floor so she knows he'll hear her coming.

“Gaila,” Jim says and his voice is soft, but she can hear him distinctly over the engine's hum. It's a relief when he turns around so she can see his face. He looks better, still tired and a little hollow, but mostly like he hasn't slept in a week, not like he's been brutalized. “You came.” Gaila goes over to him, as if she can't hear him fine from where she is.

“I'm here,” she says, cool and calm as anything. Jim nods. She steps up closer and then, just like that he reaches up and takes her hand. She slides her fingers through his. “Do you want--” she starts to say, but doesn't finish before his arms are suddenly there, wrapped around her waist hard and tight. He's strong, maybe not as strong as an Orion male would be, but strong enough. She breathes him in, holds him close and tight.

When he talks his face is half buried in her shoulder. He still sounds too soft, too young and doesn't make any kind of coherent sense. “You promised me something in there, down there, that you would help me-- did you mean it? I swear, it wouldn't just be for me. There's more to this, it isn't just me.” He shifts back, as if trying to move away without letting go of her hand.

Gaila follows, though, because she leans over him, her hair falling out of its knot and trailing over his skin. “Of course I meant it. You think what they did to you isn't more than enough?” And then she shifts over into Orion, something fierce and full of liquid edges. “I promised you heads, Jim, did you really think I didn't mean it?”

He shrugs, shoulders held too narrow and the smell of him is wrong. Small and almost ashamed. It's Terran thing and a male Terran thing at that, but knowing it doesn't make her hate it any less. Just not understand it. “I don't know,” he says and she can see that it's true. He doesn't know, doesn't trust this. “It was heat of the moment stuff down there. This... this goes past heat of the moment. This is your career, everything, I--”

Gaila doesn't tell him that every time she looks at him, too young and hollow eyed, she's right back in that moment. He wouldn't understand. Instead she kisses his cheeks, one by one. Brushes her lips over his forehead with delicacy. “You misunderstand. This isn't a careless favor I'm doing you, this is—Jim, just tell me.”

He shivers under her hands, and his eyes are so wide it's hard to look at him. “There was a planet... a Federation colony world, kinda, but it had self-governance for a long time. Not anymore, now it's-- but yeah,” he says. “It was called Tarsus IV. You probably heard of it.”

She starts to shake her head and then pauses. “I took Professor Ekuk's Psychology of a Genocide,” she says softly. “It was the semester's teaching example. The professor used it to show the ways in which Terran humans have not fully overcome the barbarity of their ancestors.” She waits a beat but he doesn't say anything and the silence stings too much to let it go on. “I was almost-- at the time, I didn't mind hearing it. It was—not _nice_, but it was... I got to know that humans could be just as horrible to each other as Orions.”

She wishes she could take it back as soon as she'd said the words, but Jim doesn't seem to hear her, not really. His shoulders are slumped and he's focused somewhere else. “I saw some of the postmortems,” he says. “A lot of them put everything on the crop failure and the governor at the time—Kodos, he called himself. That wasn't really his name. Anyway, that was all bullshit. Not just the name, I mean, the rest of it was too.”

Gaila nods when she thinks she's supposed to, but it's hard to tell. She's used to Jim and one of her favorite things about him is he doesn't play those dumb Terran games where you're just expected to know what the right social response is. When to nod and when to smile. When to touch and when to sit on your hands. Right now she'd sell her dead grandmother's teeth to know what the right thing to do was. Jim doesn't even seem to notice.

“It was such a weird fucking place,” he says. His eyes close for a moment and then flick open. His mouth curls into something soft and rueful. “I didn't know it at the time, but the colony was actually set up by Federation dissenters. A grab of these... weirdo religious types who said aliens weren't recognized by God, a couple different groups who wanted to refight the Eugenics Wars, some pure thought Luddites who wanted to farm unaltered crops—like there's even such a thing, and, you know, the people on the Starfleet base.” He seems to run out of words all at once, like the stream of them took everything out of him.

“You were on the Starfleet base.” It's not a question. He shrugs minutely in answer. She nods and goes on for him so he won't have to. “You saw something, you were caught up in it, you saw them die.”

“Yeah,” he says. “That's right. Kodos... I--” he stops again. His voices when it comes is clear, factual, precise. Like Spock speaking. “He used to wear a mask, one of those creepy ancient Greek tragedy masks. It was this bizarre ass thing, kind of misshapen, like he'd made it himself by hand of whatever. Rumor has it there are nine people living who saw his face, his real face, and they were all children. The best people in the Federation looked for him for years, but never found a trace. Never. Rumor has it that... ” he stops again. She waits, counts out breaths while she's still waiting. Holds his hands.

He doesn't speak. Finally, she does. She presses their palms together and meets his eyes when he tries to slide away. “Commander Spock has suggested medical leave for you and your spouse. We'll find this person and I'll make you a necklace of his insides. It will be a conversation piece. For cocktail parties.”

That startles the laugh she was hoping for out of him. “Oh my god, I can't wait for the cocktail parties,” he says. He pulls his palms free, but only so he can laugh into them, hard and fierce. She stays close, watching him until he stops. His eyes are wet when he pulls his hands away and he blinks at her. “Wait, my spouse?”

She nods lightly. “Commander Spock is preparing the paperwork. I think we won't be able to do it quite like in the Terran marriage vids, but I'm sure supply can make us white dresses and a cake with little figures on it.”

He blinks owlishly. “Um. White dresses?” he says. Finally, his mouth curves and the smile is almost real. She breathes. “You're fucking with me. That's so mean, fucking with the emotionally compromised.” He giggles. She grins at him.

“I will indulge your cultural obsession with pair bonds,” she says. “So I deserve the associated amusing costume.” He snickers. Maybe she's imagining that his face looks a little less strained, pale skin not quite as stretched over bone. “And you will indulge my Orion obsession with bringing you cocktail party conversation pieces,” she finishes blithely.

He sighs and closes his eyes. She can tell he wants to say something, probably something horrible but he doesn't. Just leans forward and presses a quick, chaste kiss on her mouth. “You don't have to do this. It's insane, Gaila. Even I shouldn't-- but I can do it myself.”

She shrugs. “I know that. You just don't have to, my Avinashi, my Jim.”

She can taste his breath, sour from sleeplessness. That's how close they still are. If he were well, anywhere close to well, he would start to argue again, to refuse, to explain. To order her not to follow the path her feet are already on. If he does, she'll ignore him of course, but it will be a relief anyway, to know he's that much himself. She waits.

“Thank you,” he finally says. “I lov-- I mean, thank you. For real.”


End file.
